5 ratings | 0 reviews | avg rating:5.00

Mark Abley’s Followers (26)

Mark’s Bookshelves

to-read (0)
currently-reading (0)
read (5)

Mark’s Friends (4)

Shaktima Michele Brien

1,414 books | 743 friends

Rob Dunbar

2 books | 23 friends

Elaine Naves

0 books | 18 friends

Tanya

2 books | 20 friends

Mark Abley

Goodreads Author

Born

in The United Kingdom

Website

http://www.markabley.com/

Genre

Travel, Nonfiction, Poetry

Member Since

January 2021

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscommark_abley

edit data

Mark Abley is a Rhodes Scholar, a Guggenheim Fellow, a husband and a father of two. He grew up in Western Canada, spent several years in England, and has lived in the Montreal area since the early 1980s. His first love was poetry, and he has published four collections. But he is best known for his many books of nonfiction, notably Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages and The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind.

His new book, Strange Bewildering Time: Istanbul to Kathmandu in the Last Year of the Hippie Trail, describes his travels across west and south Asia in the spring of 1978. Mark kept detailed journals during his three-month journey, allowing him to recreate his experiences from the standpoint of a much older ma ...more

Learn more
Ask the Author

To ask Mark Abley questions, please sign up.

Combine Editions
Mark Abley’s books

Average rating: 3.78 · 1,245 ratings · 211 reviews · 21 distinct works • Similar authors

	Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages 3.85 avg rating — 712 ratings — published 2003 — 33 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Strange Bewildering Time: Istanbul to Kathmandu in the Last Year of the Hippie Trail 3.73 avg rating — 128 ratings — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English 3.53 avg rating — 128 ratings — published 2008 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Watch Your Tongue: What Our Everyday Sayings and Idioms Figuratively Mean 3.35 avg rating — 63 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Conversations with a Dead Man: The Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott 3.89 avg rating — 46 ratings — published 2014 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind (The Regina Collection, 9) 4.11 avg rating — 38 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Ice Storm: An Historic Record in Photographs of January 1998 3.78 avg rating — 36 ratings — published 1998 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Stories from the Ice Storm 3.67 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 1999 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Ghost Cat by Mark Abley (Goodreads Author), Karen Reczuch (Illustrator) 3.69 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2001	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tongues of Earth 4.43 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2015 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Mark Abley…

Quotes by Mark Abley (?)

“Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to
avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness
to expand.”
― Mark Abley

13 likes

“What the survival of threatened languages means, perhaps, is the endurance of dozens, hundreds, thousands of subtly different notions of truth.”
― Mark Abley, Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages

tags: languages, linguistics, threatened-languages

1 likes

“modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand.”
― Mark Abley, Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages

0 likes

See all Mark Abley's quotes »

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
200 book challenge: Lydia's 300ish 2010 Challenge	53	137	Dec 30, 2010 06:40PM
The Reading Chall...: THE REAL McCOY: Non Fiction Challenge 2017	12	79	Jan 09, 2017 09:02AM
The Reading Chall...: Crazy Calendar 2017	13	117	Oct 21, 2017 12:05PM
The Reading Chall...: Rosemarie's Year of Reading 2017	198	130	Dec 30, 2017 05:59PM
CanadianContent: 2020 Canadian BINGO - Completion plans ONLY	16	71	Jan 01, 2020 05:06PM
Ultimate Popsugar...: Week 12: 3/13 - 3/19	113	278	Apr 13, 2020 05:57PM
Around the World ...: Rosemarie Circumnavigator 2016 to 2020	1159	827	Jan 01, 2021 08:13PM
Ultimate Popsugar...: Post your 2020 reading list!	882	5010	Apr 07, 2021 08:39PM
Never too Late to...: Name a Classic that contains a word starting with O in the title	3803	392	Oct 15, 2025 12:41AM